Demolishing truth?

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

1/14/09, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 8:52 PM CET

Pablo Picasso once said: “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.”

Alexandr Vondra, the Czech deputy prime minister, can surely empathise with Picasso, after the debacle over an art installation – Entropa – he organised to mark the Czech Republic’s presidency of the EU. In addition to the furore over the installation’s depiction of different states (Bulgaria is shown as a ‘Turkish toilet’, several figures in Lithuania are depicted, um, relieving themselves in the general direction of Russia, while the official guide to the installation describes Malta as a “small, perhaps negligible, lump of rock”), Vondra admitted on Tuesday (13 January) that he had been hoodwinked over the exhibit, which was supposed to be the work of 27 artists from across the EU, but was in fact created entirely by Czech artist David Černý. Vondra says he is now considering “further steps”. One imagines this probably includes trying to claw back the €50,000 the Czech government paid to rent the work until the end of June. The installation is exhibited in the hall of the Council of Minister’s Justus Lipsius building in Brussels.